2-28-09 The great alternator caper

What a day. We got our zarpe yesterday morning during our (we thought) last run to town on the Shelter Bay Marina shuttle. We paid our marina bill and had made arrangements to depart early morning. The weather window looked good for going east; there haven't been too many of those good ones lately. So, we get up early, pad around in the dark, have the boat ready to go, fire her up....and no alternator output. Michael had just started the engine two days ago and everything checked out fine. We had installed our new (used) Balmar alternator that we bought in Nov. We were told it had bench tested fine. Well, it did perform for just a little while! Meanwhile, no problem; we have spare alternators aboard, so into the engine room with alternator number two goes M, we start up the engine and....no alternator output. See a pattern here? Alternator number two was just picked up from a local auto repair shop here in Colon. We had no way to bench test it, so basically took the guy's word that it worked fine. Hmmm. OK, so it's on to alternator number three. Same thing! In the meantime, we're checking the regulation, wiring, fuses, star and sun alignment...anything to figure out what's happening. By this time, M's back is sore, as crawling into the engine room on his side and attaching the alternator is, literally, a pain. Alternator number four went in, but you can proably guess the rest. So, there are four non-functioning alternators aboard, which has to be some kind of record. The regulator, and even a spare new regulator, appear to be working fine, and diode testing of the alternators reveal bad diodes. How can that happen, you ask? We certainly don't know! M finally went back to the office and told the crew we weren't leaving for a bit...We'll sleep on it tonight and start some more diagnostics tomorrow, and if any of you are experts, please reply to this posting! We're thinking of just buying a new alternator, getting one of the others fixed by an alternator shop in Panama City, returning the one to the local shop in Colon, and gettin' on down the road. Actually, we have to return to Panama anyway, as the laptop isn't done yet, but that's another story...M's still pretty stiff, so I'm going to go and give him a massage... I think I heard him mumble something about "more rum...."